The first therapist who recommended that Camila get on antidepressants explained medication to her in a way that she came to agree with years later. He said that meds wouldn’t make her wake up every morning feeling happy. They would move her baseline up so she’d wake up feeling neutral. At the time, she had been waking up and immediately bursting into sobs, so “neutral” sounded pretty damn good.
Her baseline was above sea level these days. Though she would never be a morning person, her ungodly wakeup time allowed room for her elaborate morning routine of stretching, journaling, blending a protein smoothie and making herself look awake and human through the blessings of NARS and NYX.
The routines grounded her. More structure meant less uncertainty. Good habits meant fewer bad ones. And less idle time meant less time for her impulsive side to make an appearance. Her impulsivity had often gotten her into situations that resulted in the aforementioned morning sobs.
Bad Camila, that fiery, overreactive demon, was dormant, and Good Camila wanted to make sure that bitch stayed asleep.
Especially today. Because today, she was seeing Zach for the first time since the awkward back and forth at bowling, and the strange, but sort of nice, car wash interlude. She could admit to herself, begrudgingly, that she liked this man enough to want to keep herself in check so as not to scare him.
Bitterness filled her mouth as she brushed her teeth.
Zach seemed much too into her, but even so, people always picked up on the strange intensity of her. It unsettled them. Camila had a way of bedazzling people, sure. In love, she’d always experience a mutual obsession, the spell she’d unintentionally cast over a person backfiring onto her.
She knew anyone who got dosed with her — how to even describe it? — her charisma neurotoxin would eventually notice how everything Camila felt was dialed up to 11. She got too close to people too fast. When she felt sad over anything, it was as if she re-experienced everything that had ever made her sad all at once, until her grief was bottomless. The same intensity she brought to long conversations, to reveling in food, in good sex, in long naps, had a sinister edge. It was the side of her who would proclaim her undying devotion at a lover’s feet moments after sobbing her way through insulting them. Eventually, she scared everyone off with that darker side.
Camila shook her head, coming back to the present, remembering she was staring into her closet and not the infinite void. “That’s not true,” she said out loud. “You don’t scare everyone off. You have lots of wonderful people in your life and you are deserving of their love.” She spoke it, like an affirmation. Then she got ready for the mystery date.
Zach had just said he wanted to do something “active” then have an early lunch, and to wear comfy clothes. She only agreed after asking him three different ways — and getting three emphatic denials — whether they were going hiking.
She settled on the one pair of yoga pants she’d bought at full price, a plum pair with phone pockets that hugged her thighs just right, an old marching band t-shirt made from some magical cotton that didn’t get holey, and slip-on sneakers. Hating how plain she looked, she added tiny gold studs, gloss and mascara. Minimal, but better than nothing.
The doorbell rang. Of course Zach was the type to come up, not text from the driveway. She checked her teeth before letting him in.
“Hi!” she said brightly. “Let me just switch purses and I’ll be ready.” She motioned to her outfit. “This OK?”
His eyes scanned her, lingering on her legs in the tight leggings. She did a quarter turn and looked back, and his gaze locked on her ass in profile. She gave her hips a little wiggle.
“Yup, that’s good,” he said, his voice tight in his throat.
She feigned annoyance. “This better not be a hike.”
“Well, maybe it is, who knows,” he said, with that devastating smile.
They drove out to the edges of the city and arrived in a nondescript industrial area full of squat warehouses.
Camila reached into her bag to find the reassuring shape of her pepper spray. She at least wouldn’t go quietly.
“What is this?” she asked.
“I know it looks sketchy, but just trust me.”
“You keep fucking saying that,” she grumbled. Reluctant, she left the safety of the car and followed him into one of the gray boxes.
They were in a small lobby. He turned, facing her before walking farther.
“Last time we saw each other, things were uncomfortable. I thought it would be good to blow off some steam.”
She gave him a stern look. “Look at me. I’m so fucking serious right now. This better not be a dogfighting ring,” she growled.
He looked horrified. “Jesus Bleeding Christ, Camila. Just come on.”
They walked through several sets of glass doors, the last of which had a sign in a red crackle font that read Smash and Bash.
A young man looked up from his phone behind the reception desk.
“Hi,” Zach said. “We’d like to do the hour, please.”
Steve, per his name tag, nodded. “That’ll be $75 total. Have you ever been to a rage room before?”
“No,” Zach said. “Have you?” he asked Camila.
“Wait,” she said. Recognition lit up her brain. She’d seen this on the local news. “Is this that thing where you pay to break stuff?”
Zach nodded, a shy smile playing on his lips. “I thought you’d like it.”
“I love it!”
Steve cleared his throat. He slid two clipboards across the desk. “I need you to sign these waivers, and then there’s a safety video before you can suit up.”
“Suit up!” she said. “Like we’re superheroes! Do we get masks?”
“Um, you get safety goggles,” Steve said, shrugging.
“Steve. My man,” Camila said. “Missed marketing opportunity!”
* * *
Ten minutes and one safety video with dismal production value later, Zach and Camila stepped into utility jumpsuits and browsed a room of items they could destroy. Camila had starfished her arms and legs after getting on the gear, then bobbed and weaved to show off the baggy, thick material. “How do I look?”
“Like a Ghostbuster,” he said.
“Iconic,” she said. They studied the wreckable items, of which they could each pick three. Camila chose a boxy old computer — the kind she’d had as a kid, except hers had been covered in Barbie logos and cartoon flowers — a record player and a microwave. Zach picked a printer, a single-serving coffee maker and a set of china teacups.
“Printer is a classic choice,” Camila said.
“You might say I’m a man of cultured and refined tastes,” he said.
“Oh, might I?”
Next they picked their weapons. Both opted for oversized mallets.
Zach laughed, his eyes crinkling behind his safety goggles. “You look like Harley Quinn.”
“That tracks,” she said. “Except I’d never screw my patients. But I would wear the shiny hot pants. No to the face tattoos. I’d have gone more for the Euphoria aesthetic, but Gotham.”
“Gimme your rendition, then.” Zach twirled his mallet back and forth across the dirty warehouse floor.
Camila felt her face cracking into a grin. She lifted her mallet, getting used to its weight, and let momentum and pent-up energy do the rest.
“I’m Camila Fucking Moore!” she yelled in her best Margot Robbie, bringing the mallet down onto the computer screen. It replied with a loud crunch, the black glass blooming into hundreds of sharp petals.
The destruction thrilled her. She brought the mallet down again and again, putting all her weight into it, and watched the plastic casing crack and warp, watched the wires reaching out as if begging her to stop.
Sparring at Ivy’s gym let her surrender to the wild part of her a little, let her transmute what she’d spent her life fearing into something positive. But fighting a person you didn’t intend to hurt still required control and caution. A hunk of plastic and metal felt no pain, so she could go to town.
Zach had been watching her and had yet to swing. Camila stopped for a breath once the computer was pulp.
“Do you need me to film a tutorial for you or something? Quit standing there and break some shit,” she said.
He started whaling on the teacups.
The dainty shattering sent Camila into an undignified burst of cackling.
“Wait. This is pretty funny.” She handed him her phone. “Will you film me? I can use this in a video.”
They took turns pummeling their doomed wares and filming each other. They panted and laughed and wiped sweat off their foreheads. Her arms were strong from her bo staff training, but already she felt fatigued swinging the mallet.
Sweat tickled the back of Camila’s neck. She was swinging from her chest, from the pressure building behind her sternum with every breath and uncoiling every time she shattered something. For just a second, she felt it. The too-much-ness, the memory of feeling like she was destroying everything even if she was just standing still. She felt like this room was the inside of her mind, and the absurdity of that made her want to cry.
Zach was looking at her. Concern shadowed his features. Just like that, Camila commanded the tears to cease and evaporate.
“The endorphins are making me a little woozy,” she said.
They got cleaned up and chugged water before heading to brunch, where Camila ordered dulce de leche French toast and nabbed a bite of Zach’s burrito.
When their conversations were just words on a screen, it was easy. But when they were together, she felt like a tongue-tied fraud.
He was too goddamn attractive, like she’d designed him. If she was living in a simulation, the alien robot overlords had made it too obvious, she feared. His hair was too tousled, the way it was starting to get shaggy around his ears. His smile was just the right amount of sheepish. He was the exact height that made her dizzy and disoriented to look up at for too long.
And worst of all, his glasses were back, like neon signs pointing at those fucking cheekbones. He’d ditched the contacts sometime between the rage room and now. The smile he gave her while they sat across from each other made her ribs hurt. She needed to identify a flaw.
“Your hands are so calloused,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Working hands.” She stroked a rough patch on his palm and smiled.
Frowning, he said, “We did just spend an hour swinging mallets. My hands don’t work that hard. I’m just too lazy for hand lotion.”
“Really? You can’t just, you know, reach over to the nightstand?”
He blushed and she cackled. “You’re a demon,” he told her, taking a bite of her French toast.
“Why does everyone call me that?”
He ignored that. “Also, I’m a goddamn man, Camila. I’ve got lube, good lube. I’m not some scoundrel jerking off into a sock.”
She almost dropped the food off her fork.
“So what’s your preferred brand? Do you have a top five? Being a man of refined tastes, as you are.”
“Well, the one I use, I order online. But if you ask me what I prefer,” he said, lowering his voice but not changing a thing about his matter-of-fact tone, “I’d prefer to make you come all over my hand and use that.”
She waited a beat to make sure she’d heard him right. “Yeah?” she asked. “Are you into having an audience?”
“I’d be into having you as an audience.”
Camila swallowed hard. “I love going to a show with audience participation.” They finished their meals while reverting to safer flirty conversations.
“You ready to go?” Zach asked after they’d paid.
He grabbed her hand while they walked back to the car. It was a short drive back to her place, just long enough to make her panic at the thought of ending the date.
“Thanks for coming out today,” Zach said, putting the car in park in her driveway.
“Oh, but you’re coming up.”
He chuckled. “I am?”
She tried to look affronted. “Yeah, so you can make me come all over your hand and then get yourself off while I watch? Sweetheart, you wrote the menu. I’m just putting my order in.”
Camila half expected him to laugh her off and bail. Instead, he turned off the ignition and met her outside the car, hand outstretched.
“Order up.”